Crime

Here and there – Fallacies, fallibility, and hypocrisy in our psyche

/ Geoffrey Gibson / 4 Comments

 

On the day of the underarm bowling incident, I had worked hard all day.  My cab driver was full of shocked disbelief and disgust.  When he told me, I started laughing.  This upset him.  ‘What else do you expect when you sell your soul for lucre?’  Then The Age reported on one tight one-day game under the headline ‘Come on dollar, come on.’  Creighton Burns told me he feared that they might go under.  I can’t recall if the article quoted that great line from The Great Gatsby.

It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people – with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe.

As the smoke clears after the disaster at Cape Town, and as the pendulum swings back, we might reflect on two fallacies.  One is that sporting bodies can be run as a business in the same way that any business can be run.  That’s just wrong – for reasons that Donald Trump is finding out.  The other fallacy is that at the top professional level, people are playing games as part of a sport.  In some sense they are, but they are also leading figures in the entertainment industry, and that industry is a significant source of business for broadcasting and gaming companies.  The so-called players are as integral to the economy as widget-makers.  Hence their outrageous pay.

Next, with one possible exception, none of us is infallible.  We all make mistakes.  And thank God – the contrary is unthinkable automation.  Some of our wholly fallible young men in Cape Town made a big mistake.  They are paying a hideous price.

People say that the underarm job was lawful and that this case is worse.  I disagree.  I don’t think that you can measure moral culpability by degrees of lawfulness.  Our whole legal system is predicated on our capacity to review the ‘equity’ of the case.  If you break the rules, you face the sanctions imposed by the rules.  But if you evade the rules and by doing so you hurt the game, then in my view you are the more toxic and culpable agent.  It’s like tax evasion.  For that reason, I regard the conduct of Trevor Chappell and his brother, and that of Stuart Broad in refusing to walk, as doing a lot more harm to the game than the breach of the rules admitted in Cape Town.  For that reason too, I regard our young men as far less blameworthy.

Now for hypocrisy.  Let’s start with ‘we the people’.  We may be outraged, but we can’t say that we are surprised.  We tolerated a hopelessly outmoded administration – dominated by an old god with a gong – treating our champions as medieval serfs and making them ideal prey to Kerry Packer and the gods of television.  Then we supported those ludicrous pyjama games that have so debased our own coinage – and character.  Then we turned up to cheer an even sluttier version.  And for about a generation, we have sat idly by while a patently weak body, Cricket Australia, just allowed things to get worse and worse.  We should be ashamed of ourselves.  But, no, we had to have our ritual humiliation, and on Good Friday eve.

The hypocrisy of the ICC is unspeakable.  They are inept and bent.

Mr Sutherland’s position is untenable.  At its most polite, he has been standing too close to too many accidents.  He and the board are responsible, not just in the sense of being answerable, but because their failures of governance have led to this mess.  And the whole nation knows it.  If Mr Lehmann had to take responsibility, so must Mr Sutherland.

Then there are the corporates who talk about ‘core values’.  That is pure bullshit.  Did the CBA even have the gall to stick up its head?  People are already comparing our cricketers to our bankers.  The bankers committed their crimes over time, and directly for the thirty pieces of silver.  Will any of them be punished as hard as Steve Smith?  Not on your bloody Nelly, Mate.

As for the mockers elsewhere, do you really think that you are well placed to cast the first stone?  At least our boys came clean and are taking it down the front.  Your turn will surely come.

There is something very, very wrong when a good young man like Steve Smith must take all this pain, while those responsible walk free.  The whole body needs cleansing – the whole of it – and every player must have seared into his being the proposition that when he puts on that jumper, he stands in a position of trust to me because that jumper is mine.

And remember this.  Bodyline was lawful.  Who says that Smith is guiltier than Jardine?

Crime Fiction – Donna Leon again

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

A third try.

Crime Fiction – Donna Leon again

Last year, I wrote a note about Donna Leon that began as follows.

If you read only the hard stuff, you might get ratty.  About three years ago, I asked a friend to recommend a good crime or thriller writer.  He said that a woman called Donna Leon had a following for detective stories set in Venice, starting with a plot centred at the opera house La Fenice.  I read one and Donna and I are getting just fine.  I have just read about my tenth, which is also centred on La Fenice, and the stalking of the prima donna in Tosca being performed there.  This is a real bonus for fans of opera or Venice.

Donna Leon is or was an American academic who taught literature and music.  She has lived in Venice for 25 years, which is about the number of the novels in the series.  Like most crime novels they are written after a model. 

Commissario Guido Brunetti is a very astute detective who studied law and who occasionally reads Greek tragedy for uplift.  (How many wallopers do that?)  His wife Paola lectures in English, specializing in Henry James.  She is also the daughter of a count and countess.  She can also cook, and we get full descriptions of her offerings.  They have two children who must now be of university age. 

I have just read the first novel called Death at La Fenice.  It is about the death of a maestro who dies of cyanide poisoning during the second interval of La Traviata.  He is German and a jerk who thought he was God and who bears a strong resemblance to Herbert von Karajan.  According to her website, Leon wrote this novel as a joke, but went on with it when she won a prize.  There are now 25 Brunetti novels.  Most of the recurring characters are here from the beginning, but many fans follow this author because of the part played by Venice or opera, and because of the Mickey she takes out of the Italians – often quite firmly.  There is also the good food and wine, and the bad politics, and hardly any sex or violence.  They are very easy reads.  If you want to read to relax, Donna is the go.

Here she introduces her hero for the first time.

He was a surprisingly neat man: Tie carefully knotted, hair shorter than was the fashion; even his ears lay close to his head, as if reluctant to call attention to themselves.  His clothing marked him as Italian.  The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian.  His eyes were all policeman.

In the course of his investigation he interviews a theatre director called Santore.

Santore was a man of average height and build, but he had the face of a boxer at the end of an unlucky career.  His nose was squashed, its skin large-pored.  His mouth was broad, his lips thick and moist.  He asked Brunetti if he would like a drink, and from that mouth came words spoken in the purest of Florentine accents, pronounced with the clarity and grace of an actor.  Brunetti thought Dante must have sounded like this.

Here we are introduced to the boss of the hero, a politically well-connected idiot called Cavaliere Giuseppe Patta.  (You utter the word ‘political’ with great care in Venice.)

Cavaliere Giuseppe Patta had been sent to Venice three years before in an attempt to introduce new blood into the criminal justice system.  In this case, the blood had been Sicilian and had proved to be incompatible with that of Venice.  Patta used an onyx cigarette holder and had been known, upon occasion, to carry a silver-headed walking stick.  Though the first had made Brunetti stare and the second laugh, he tried to reserve judgement until he had worked long enough with the man to decide if he had a right to these affectations.  It had taken Brunetti less than a month to decide that though the affectations did suit the man, he had little right to them.  The vice-questore’s work schedule included a long coffee each summer morning on the terrace of the Gritti, and, in the winter, at Florian’s.  Lunch was usually taken at the Cipriani pool or Harry’s Bar, and he usually decided at about four to ‘call it a day’.  Few others would so name it.

Toward the end of this first novel, we get a suggestion of the only fault of the wife, Paola.  She cheats compulsively at Monopoly when playing with the family.

By general consent, Paola was forbidden to be banker, as she had been caught too many times, over the course of the years, with her hand in the till……Brunetti noticed Paola calmly sliding a small pile of ten-thousand-lire notes from the banker’s pile to her own.  She glanced up, noticed that her husband had seen her stealing from her own children, and gave him a dazzling smile.  A policeman, married to a thief, with a computer monster and an anarchist for children.

Brunetti, who reads Aeschylus for relaxation, has a guarded relationship with his father-in-law, the Count.

Brunetti, for his part, earns slightly more than three million lire a month as a commissario, a sum he calculated to be only a bit more than what his father-in-law paid each month for the right to dock his boat in front of the palazzo.  A decade ago, the Count had attempted to persuade Brunetti to leave the police and join him in a career in banking.  He continually pointed out that Brunetti ought not to spend his life in the company of tax invaders, wife-beaters, pimps, thieves, and perverts.  The offers had come to a sudden halt one Christmas when, goaded beyond patients, Brunetti had pointed out that although he and the Count seem to work among the same people, he at least had the consolation of being able to arrest them, whereas the Count was constrained to invite them to dinner.

It is hard to imagine a better kind of read for a long-haul flight.  The Famous Five for would-be Venetians.

Crime Fiction

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

If you read only the hard stuff, you might get ratty.  About three years ago, I asked a friend to recommend a good crime or thriller writer.  He said that a woman called Donna Leon had a following for detective stories set in Venice, starting with a plot centred at the opera house La Fenice.  I read one and Donna and I are getting just fine.  I have just read about my tenth, which is also centred on La Fenice, and the stalking of the prima donna in Tosca being performed there.  This is a real bonus for fans of opera or Venice.

Donna Leon is or was an American academic who taught literature and music.  She has lived in Venice for 25 years, which is about the number of the novels in the series.  Like most crime novels they are written after a model.

Commissario Guido Brunetti is a very astute detective who studied law and who occasionally reads Greek tragedy for uplift.  (How many wallopers do that?)  His wife Paola lectures in English, specializing in Henry James.  She is also the daughter of a count and countess.  She can also cook, and we get full descriptions of her offerings.  They have two children who must now be of university age.

There is a support cast that reminds me of Perry Mason.  The bad guys are Brunetti’s superiors, who are from out of town, thick, and right wing.  The good guys include plain honest cops who have no guile or political ambition, and Signorina Elettra who is a whiz on computers and bending the law.  Anything to do with government, bureaucracy, the south, or the church is open season.  Indeed, for me the crime plot is just an excuse to hang up the clothes on which to examine Italian customs, foibles, and culinary and artistic traditions.  They are I would guess the main reasons that Leon has such a following.  She is translated into many languages, except Italian, and the Germans have made TV series about her stories.

Leon is an acute observer of her adopted country – or, I should say, city, since we are often told that Venice is different – and spoiled by tourists and cruise ships.  Many of her books look at current issues, such as child abuse, child slavery, or stalking.  But it is the descriptions of city life and eating and drinking, and the social customs that get me in.

Brunetti dined with his wife at her parents – ‘he was surprised by how casually his parents-in-law were dressed until he realised this meant that the Conte’s tie was wool and not silk, while the Contessa was wearing black silk slacks and not a dress.’  They discuss the grand-son’s love life.  The grand-daughter is not showing much interest.  ‘It won’t last much longer’, Paola said, voicing the eternal pessimism of the mothers of young girls.  ‘Some day she’ll show up at breakfast in a tight sweater and twice as much make-up as Sophia Loren.’  It is not just mums who know that.  The corruption is worse down south.  Some of the barbs are laugh out loud.  After some spectacular act of deviance, Signorina Elettra, who may have raised the pulse rate of a younger or single man, swaps stories with the dottore.  She knew of a guy who was a stage hand at the opera in Naples.  He never actually worked there.  He just clocked on and off five days a week and drove his cab seven days a week.  He had to.  He had many mouths to feed.  How long did this go on?  A mere quarter of a century.

These books are seriously entertaining and you get a slice of life of the people who gave us Verdi and Ferrari, two of mankind’s essential blessings.  The 2015 model, Falling in Love, is up to form.